If the price is too high I'll just undercut him. Unless he's willing to go lower than my suppliers he's not a problem...real problems are other hardcore AH players with suppliers such as ours.

He doesnt have to go lower than your suppliers to cause you a problem. If someone cuts my profit margin down to 10% or even 0% across a wide range of items then thats a probelm. If he does destroy your markets, then you will find it much harder to increase the price again. I am assuming he has enough of a supply o keep going, Oy is very easy to be a vandal on the ah.

He doesnt have to go lower than your suppliers to cause you a problem. If someone cuts my profit margin down to 10% or even 0% across a wide range of items then thats a probelm. If he does destroy your markets, then you will find it much harder to increase the price again. I am assuming he has enough of a supply o keep going, Oy is very easy to be a vandal on the ah.

Read my first post and you'll see what I mean...I don't mind lowereing my price to 1 copper profit if I need to...and I'll repeat it again... unless my competition can lower their price lower than my supplier they will never be a problem.

Read my first post and you'll see what I mean...I don't mind lowereing my price to 1 copper profit if I need to...and I'll repeat it again... unless my competition can lower their price lower than my supplier they will never be a problem.

If they're willing to go with no margin, build a wall behind them and let it sit in 48-hour increments. Dig in and hold your position... it becomes a war of attrition but they have to maintain a supply channel.

I wasnt very clear about what im trying to ask here. Im looking to start discussion about market control in todays WoW.

Is it worth the effort?
How do other auctioneers do it?
Success and failure stories
Which particular items or markets do you try to control?
Is market control even possible today?

Also I would prefer nobody disclose which server you are refering too. People put a lot of effort into auctioneering and we dont want to undo any of that work by giving up secrets or strategies. Its also not relevant to the conversation as we are only discussing the concept of market control.

Market control is impossible unless you can play 24/7 or cheat using a bot to re-list your wares.

Instead of trying to control a simple market, try spreading it out, it's less work and the rewards are as good. Albeit not as astronomical as the first few days if you manage to "control" a hot niche of market.

I don't see the motivation behind being 18+ hrs a day re-listing, undercutting, buying out competition, dodging the competence (yes you will need many alts for this, some serious AH pvpers have several accounts to spread their auctions and avoid being dodged) for virtual gold. You can manage to make 30-100k a week without investing more than 10 minutes a day in an average realm economy.

If they're willing to go with no margin, build a wall behind them and let it sit in 48-hour increments. Dig in and hold your position... it becomes a war of attrition but they have to maintain a supply channel.

what chipsky says is correct. Even if you are willing to lower to zero profit you are still limited by the fact you have the fixed costs of paying your supplier. He can go lower and then as chipsky says its a war of attrition. Whilst the pair of you are fighting tooth and nail over zero profit, then other people are getting ahead by doing more profitable things. Owning a loss making market is pretty pointless unless you might be able to increase it much later, but the trend of stuff is always downwards. Never be overconfident on your server becayse you will not be able to stand up to the combined efforts of the rest of the server and its likely there will be somone bigger meaner and with more money to waste on fighting you. Quite a few players sitting on golf mountains who can afford to lose money and destroy your markets for sustained periods if they dislike you.

I have no problem competing in an open market, say for glyphs... but when someone comes in and tries to force everyone else out, I post 3 of all 406 glyphs at X-gold and leave it until they fold. It takes a few days and you may get some grief for it, but other sellers will understand when someone is trying to drive everyone else out. I cost a few gold to repost them everyday in 48-hour increments... that is well worth the price of watching the competitor fail and nerd-rage in trade chat. =)

Walling is insanely effective and easy to accomplish. YMMV. Crass? Hardly... to label as that is to indict the entire market, to which I'd respond, "eye for an eye." I do agree that you never wall below cost, that would be silly.

Magnificent hide: Works like a charm on my server. Farmes try to sell them, not many people know they can be crafted from 50 Leather. Still: They only way to get them is either farm or buy them from AH.

Back in Vanilla one guildie of mine made a "bond". You could invest into his bond, and he would give you a fixed interest rate for it. He simply needed a specific amout of money (20.000k) to control all of his desired markets. I don't think this can be done nowadays, because the gold supply is nearly endless and there are to many sources of the mats (like farm etc.).

With so many kobolds on ah this days it's impossible to control any kind of market...
Imagine for example glyph of Icy Touch... One of mandatory glyphs for dks... You and your competitors sell it fo 150-160 or even more... And then, kobold come and post 10 glyphs for 5g... U buy him out, repost, sell one of them for 200g, he shows up again, post 10 more glyphs fo 5g... You buy him out again, repost, sell one or two for 200g, and he again post 10 glyphs for 5g...

At the end, u have spent 100g to buy him out, earned 400g from selling 2 glyphs and got stuck with 18 glyphs u can't sell, because kobold keep posting glyphs for 5g and there's no market for them...

Biggest part of the battle is knowing your market. Blues and yellows have *very little* use and stack to the ceiling for anyone shuffling. If players sniff a market for them, its flooded immediately because the supply is insane. I've vendored bank tabs full of both.

With the lotus and flask market your best buy is stockpile, then dump your stock pile at the new undercut. Like on my server Lotus started backing up at 75 gold a lotus, but no one wants to charge less. You get a few folks that sell it at 60 and its slowly going down because people only buy it on the cheap because its readily available. Your best bet is take all of your supply and cash out and move to the next big market. If you don't know what that market is already, then you aren't ready to control even a small one like lotus. ie take 10 or 20 stacks of lotus sell them for say 50 gold a piece...a huge difference than the 68 to 75 they've been. take your 10 or 20k and invest in that next market. Basically undercut the undercutters with a huge flood of the goods and leave the market behind for the next one. Flask market is normally dead during T2, and should revive at the end of the expansion, T3 maybe this time, when everyone realized their stockpiles are out but are too lazy to farm them.

I have a hard time seeing anyone buying flasks at 300g each, on my server you get one flask for 50 gold no matter what sort, but i geuss it depends on how highly populated it is, being on one of the most populated horde realms in Europe though.

Market control can be achieved on smaller realms, as there is less factors which can affect your business, that would not be possible on mine because of how many people there are in the enchanting/jc and alchemy business, its a true babysitting market, i often get undercut by a copper or two within a minute of posting the auction.

Biggest part of the battle is knowing your market. Blues and yellows have *very little* use and stack to the ceiling for anyone shuffling. If players sniff a market for them, its flooded immediately because the supply is insane. I've vendored bank tabs full of both.

You are very wrong with the blues and yellows have very little use. Plenty of profit to make off those gems. Not huge but def steady.